


There Are Two Scary Things About Cecil Palmer

by StoriesFromDust



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Awkward Carlos, Blowjobs, M/M, Spoilers Episodes 1-27, Teeth, establishing a relationship, somewhat Monster Cecil, sort-of-tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 01:41:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoriesFromDust/pseuds/StoriesFromDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thought of many things made Carlos’ head swim; Muttering some half formed confession about his fears and feelings, putting his hand on the knee of someone he trusted, working up the courage to call for personal reasons, stumbling through a first date with someone he was still partially terrified of, being unable to place the source of that terror anymore. Carlos tried anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Two Scary Things About Cecil Palmer

**Author's Note:**

> This is just super self-indulgence, even more so than my other stories, so hopefully other people want to indulge in the same things that I do (Hey, let’s be friends).  
> I wanted to explore my Monster!Cecil headcanons, as well as just touch a little bit, a tiny amount, into the realm of tentacles and teeth. It’s a new thing for me. Strange and new and curious. It ended up being less like tentacles and more like… a very strange tattoo kink? If there is a name for whatever this is, let me know. For science. 
> 
> I don’t know why I always have to start my porn stories with all of the damn character backstory. It ended up being half backstory and then half long-winded making out, body-exploration and blowjobs. 
> 
> I hope someone likes reading it, I liked writing it.
> 
> ((No one proof read this aside from me, so if you see mistakes, say something. Say the word ‘something’ in the comments and watch me slowly descend into madness trying to find the error, clawing wildly at the screen, screaming ‘where is the typo? where is the typo?’ until the skinless stumps of my fingers falter and finally lie still.))

 

It didn't occur to him to panic as soon as he crossed the city limits, because Carlos was zoned out, lulled to mindlessness by the long stretches of desert road and sleepy focus. His eyes were forward, open, and glassy. The desert was a blank slate of sand and scrub-brush, there hadn’t been an interesting thing to look at for miles. He was tired of driving and now that he was finally in Night Vale he felt a kind of plastic covered relief. He had set out on the trip early that morning, too excited to stay put even though he was already a day or two ahead of the rest of his research team. His own lab was waiting, and he had somehow lucked into a position leading the research there. Unfortunately this meant he hadn’t slept a wink, but he was here, and he could start, and that was exciting.

When he started searching for the motel in earnest he became aware of a dull terror, and he mentally apologized to Kelsey. She had warned him about Nightvale, and Carlos had scoffed. She warned him again, deeply concerned, and Carlos had worried about her sanity. She warned him, frantically, madly, clawing at his car door as he started the drive, and Carlos had sped away, a little frightened. When he was on the highway, he called one of Kelsey’s friends to have her… evaluated somehow. Carlos frowned when he hung up, Kelsey had always seemed so stable minded.

He was first alerted to a problem when he spied three hooded figures by the side of the road. As soon as he saw them their black empty hoods snapped to him in unison, Carlos shivered. He drove past, speeding up a little, and the hoods rotated to follow, fixed on him with dark intensity. Their bodies did not rotate, just the heads, even as Carlos rounded a corner and took his car far beyond the eighty degrees that a standard human head can rotate. But he passed them, settled the uneasiness in his stomach, and flicked his eyes between the paper where he had scrawled the motel’s address and the street signs. The street signs which appeared to be in English, Spanish, and Elder Futhark. Ok, so, that was weird, but fine. He found the turns he needed so it was fine. He took note of the Ralphs, which was fine, and the Arbys which was fine, and thought that maybe everything was fine.

It was less fine when the paper with the address caught alight on its own and Carlos had to frantically pat it out in the passenger seat. It was _much_ less fine when he caught sight of one of three hooded figured lowering an arm slowly from the roadside, miles away from where he had first seen them. It was probably the least fine thing he had seen when he witnessed a crowd surrounding what appeared to be a man as he brought down what appeared to be a rusty meat cleaver through what appeared to be…

 _Nope_ , Carlos stopped looking at or processing things that were not the road and the signs. The signs were only in Elder Futhark now, but that was fine because the fire had turned his directions to Elder Futhark as well. Everything was probably fine, or not remotely fine at all. One of those.

So now he was apologising to Kelsey in his mind, then begging for forgiveness, then, really just mentally screaming in blank panic as he pulled into the motel parking lot. He walked directly to his room, backpack in hand, and swiped the key card. The door opened, and Carlos slammed it behind him.

He hadn’t checked in. He was very keenly aware that he had not gone into the front office to get the key, or known what room was his, or paid for anything. He parked, and he went into the room.

Carlos considered throwing up.

Looking around the motel room, it was… normal. He checked the corners and the lights and the bed and under the bed too. The room was not scary. He was fairly sure he had slept in a room exactly like it once in Kansas. It hadn’t been scary then either.

“I think I am overtired.” Carlos said to himself. “Probably just very, very tired.” He nodded to confirm that he felt that way. He would go get his other luggage from the car, and then come back in and have a nap. He was fairly certain he could make it to the car and back just... fine.

He couldn’t be sure if it was the same three hooded figures standing in the parking lot about twenty feet away, but he was pretty sure it was, and they were still looking at him. Looking  into him, through him, past him.

Carlos did not go out to his car or get his luggage or have a nap.

In fact he spent the rest of the afternoon wide awake in the motel room, thankful for the energy bars stashed in his backpack. The sheer normalcy and odd familiarity of the room was a comfort, and every so often he gathered up his courage to peek out the window. The hooded figures never moved, Carlos decided that they were just going to stare at him threateningly from about seventeen feet away.

He tried to watch television but the three channels, consisted of static, static with a news ticker scrolling across the bottom edge, and a womans face, unblinking but shivering slightly, staring over his left shoulder.

Carlos looked back at the hooded figures, still only about fifteen feet away. The rest of the desert expanse was uneventful, but the more he tried to look at the figures, the more his eyes slipped over them and into the sands and sky.

The sun crawled across the sky, and eventually fell into the sand wastes. Thankfully not in a literal sense, because the sun is a massive ball of burning gasses much larger than the earth and that would have been positively disastrous, but in a metaphorical sense of perception it crashed down and the result was much more pink and beautiful and much less white and deadly.

Darkness crept in and around Night Vale with quick purpose and now Carlos could only vaguely see the outline of the three hooded figures. They… they were, perhaps, slightly closer to the window than they had been previously. Less than thirteen feet. Carlos shut the drapes and busied himself locating every light he had previously checked, and flicking them all on.

Carlos took stock of himself. He was frightened, he was regretting his life choices, he was about nine tenths sure he was going to go back home tomorrow, if tomorrow came at all, he was curious, he was a scientist, and he was ashamed of those nine tenths of himself. He was not ready to forfeit his life by staying, but he was not any more ready to forfeit his purpose by leaving.

Carlos flicked on the radio instead.

“… Time stretches out before us, distant and unreachable, we pull ourselves forward moment by moment, towards what? Moments past seem so close behind, at an arms length, if we wanted to we could reach out, caress them gently. We think about it, but we do not, because we are fascinated with the endless miles ahead of us, and because time travel has been banned by the city council. So we move forward, ever curious, until a threshold is crossed. We do not see it coming, or feel it pass, but one day we awake and look back over our lives to see not a reachable and tangible memory, but an ever flowing train of existence, distant and ungraspable. Now the path ahead of us is shorter, knowable, horrible. Minutes pass by in a lightning flash, we are being pulled forward by the unflappable law that time must flow at one second per second, regardless of our desires, but attention does not flow at that speed, it flows in fits and bursts, a clogged pipe. We do not move ourselves, we never did, it was an illusion. Maybe it all was an illusion. We can not grasp our memories to verify, we can not check that they are real. We can only move forward, ever quickening, hurtling forward until finally, with a sigh or a scream we pass beyond the membrane of existence. Our minds slide through that gelatinous filter, slicking itself over our thoughts, pulling them separate from our bodies and casting them ahead, finally free of time, out into meaninglessness. All of us together, alone in the void.

This has been, traffic.”

Carlos barked a nervous laugh, but the man on the radio only moved on seamlessly to the next segment.

The broadcast continued on with gossip and community events and long rambling monologues that should really be quite unsettling, but the deep voice instead gave Carlos a kind of perspective. A welcome perspective. Nestled in the winding existential outpour of the show Carlos formed a picture in his mind of a community of people who were comfortable, and welcoming, and bloody, and smiling.

At some point Carlos fell asleep, lulled down into that void of the mind by deep soothing tones. Sleep came as a surprise. Not to Carlos, because he was sleeping, and really there wasn’t anyone else present to be surprised, but there was a general air of surprise in the motel room, since Carlos believed that he might never sleep again, considering Night Vale. If someone came into the room that night, passing through the locked door, they would certainly feel surprised by the tone of it all. But no one did.

Honest.

 

Carlos woke the next morning, and this time the surprise had a body to inhabit, and it inhabited Carlos with a wave of relief. Again, considering Night Vale, he would _not_ have been surprised if he had never woken up (mostly because he would be dead). But he woke up, and he was calm. He felt fairly confident that today he could leave the motel room, walk out to his car, get in it, drive to the landlord’s address, and get his keys.

So he did that.

The hooded figures were still waiting outside, sitting on the stoop next to his car. What had the radio said last night? That everyone just ignored them? Carlos shook off his tension and decided to give it a try. He got into his car, pretending to be alone. He was vaguely aware that one of their heads was lolling a little to the side, and Carlos wondered if it had fallen asleep.

It was actually nice to have the frame of reference from that program in his mind, and he flicked on the radio to find the station again, but he was only able to find one station listing off a series of numbers and chimes.

 

The landlord was an older woman with deep lines carved around her mouth, wrinkles work from years of expression. She was smiling now, a vacant kind of smile. The smile of a woman who had been woken from a pleasant dream or perhaps was not altogether present as she spoke with her new tenant.

“So the place is over by Big Rico's Pizza, which will come in handy for you. There's a copy of the town bylaws already in the entryway, you read those well, you won't get warned twice.” She said, still smiling.

Carlos was vaguely aware that he should probably feel threatened, but really she didn't seem like she meant anything by it. She didn't really seem like she meant anything by anything. She was just talking for the sake of it.

“Are you here by free will or compulsion, if I may be so forward as to ask.” She said.

Carlos laughed, but she did not laugh, so Carlos stopped abruptly and rubbed the back of his neck instead. “ah. Free will?” He said, though really he was starting to wonder.

“Oh! Well I thought so, considering you called to rent directly instead of the city council on your behalf. You do have that _look_ about you, but I didn’t want to _presume_.” She smiled wider while Carlos tried to parse that statement, “You are going to fit right in, most people who come by free will, bless them, don’t leave the motel for the first week. You know we import those directly from a little town in Kansas.”

“Oh, well” Carlos groped for words for a moment and settled on: “they are lovely.” He was hoping his face was twisted in a polite smile, and not bewilderment.

 

-

 

Carlos had fallen asleep to the radio for the third time that same week, framing the previous day’s oddities in the perspective of a citizen. The news program followed a haphazard format, sometimes updates throughout the day as events unfolded, sometimes a long block in the evening, there was not a clear schedule. Sometimes it didn’t air at all, and on those days Carlos had nightmares.

His assistants had arrived, but Carlos already had the lab set up so they didn’t hide in the motel like he had, they just hid in the lab. It was much more comforting to be around something stable, things that gave clear, scheduled, tangible reactions.

The radio may not have been scheduled, or clear, or… well technically tangible either. It did give Carlos an edge on the town though, and the announcer had given him an unintended warning. They had come to this town to study it, but had not really introduced themselves. After a cryptic statement made the the announcer to the effect of ‘why are these outsiders and what do they want?’ Carlos decided to organize a quick town meeting. He didn’t want to be at odds with the people here. If he was, he would surely lose.

Surprisingly, he was able to arrange it for the same day. Apparently sudden meetings were common. He made sure to smile, he was pretty sure smiling was still a sign of friendly intentions, and he was pleased to see smiles returned. He even knew some of these people, he’d heard about them on the show. He was already getting familiar. He was confident. His eyes were already cleanly slipping over the ever present hooded followers.

His speech was short, to the point, and received by a polite smattering of applause.  He sighed when he was done, hoping that he hadn't made them all feel like an experiment. From where he stood to the left of the raised stage everyone seemed more interested in corn muffins than anything he had said.

“Oh, um, excuse me?” Carlos heard from over his shoulder, dragging attention away from his notes. Carlos turned his head and saw a hand extended at him, attached to a man. He was just a normal man, not thin or fat, not short or tall. Carlos extended his own hand, and drew a friendly smile across his face.

Perhaps it had not been the correct choice. In response to the smile, the averagely tan man, with the averagely built frame and averagely colored eyes constricted them. The eyes. Or, well, not his eyes. He didn’t close his eyes. He constricted his irises. As in: they disappeared. Like a pupil might constrict in harsh sunlight, only more so. They were gone, they were white. He had white eyes. The corners of his eyes crinkled. Carlos didn’t want to be rude by staring at them, he wanted to flick his eyes away and back for the socially acceptable requisite of moments to suggest he was paying attention, but _was not_ threatening. However, if he didn’t stare at them he was going to stare at the rows of pearly white razor sharp fangs, like a shark’s except less haphazard. A shark with good oral hygiene. He was going to stare at the rows of shark-with-good-oral-hygiene teeth that were… smiling, let’s say, back at him. He didn’t want to stare at those. He was panicking.

They clasped hands, shook once, and let go.

The man did not have a problem speaking around the teeth, so it was likely they were not fake. “Ah. H-hello.”

Carlos said hello back, probably. He was worried about the teeth. He wasn’t sure what he said exactly. It the odds were good that it was “Hello”

“Um, oh, well I thought I should say hello, which is why I did that just now. uh. You’re new in Night Vale? You are here to do science?” The edges of the smile faltered downward and his eyebrows knitted together. Somewhere behind the teeth and eyes Carlos registered the look of a man who had no idea why he was saying what he was saying. “I mean. I knew that already, I, uh...” the man fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a card. “Let me try again, when I am not looking right at you.” He held out the card, but without irises Carlos couldn’t tell if he wasn’t looking at him at all, much less ‘anymore.’ “I’m Cecil, I report the news here in Night Vale. I just… I thought it would be a good opportunity to say hi. Are you liking Night Vale so far?”

Carlos wanted to say: _can you still see with no irises or pupils? You are acting like you can, but I don’t know how that’s possible. Are you as carnivorous as your teeth suggest?_

Carlos actually said: “I am getting accustomed to it here. You said you did the news?” He hadn’t realized at first, the man’s voice wasn’t so deep in person. “I think I’ve heard your show, it’s good.”  

“Oh my gosh,” Cecil beamed, or maybe bared his teeth threateningly, but it was probably beaming. Beaming matched the tone in his voice, and beaming ment Carlos was not going to get mauled. “That is just so, so nice of you to say.” Cecil put one hand on his chest, he was still holding out the card.

Carlos hoped he was smiling back, so he tried a little harder at it just in case. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he took the card.

“Well, I... I guess.” Cecil said, before clearing his throat. “I mean, it was really lovely to meet you. Really. Lovely. My number is on the card, call me. With news, call me to report news that you might have, that you want to share with me, or Night Vale, or both. You can call about anything. But just news is good. Both are good.”

Carlos could feel himself starting to ask about the man's eyes. It was so difficult not to nose in on every strange little thing he saw, but he was well aware that he was here as a polite observer, not some kind of a nosy mad scientist. He muttered something about needing to get back to the lab before he could form together a theory on the irises. He definitely did not want to say 'you seem nervous, do you constrict your irises as a sign of non-aggression? Am I failing some kind of social etiquette by making eye contact? It could be an incredibly interesting form of non-threatening posture, not just to avoid eye contact but to eliminate your iris completely. That way you can, or rather your animal ancestors could, still look directly at a potential threat but not appear aggressive. Is it just a pigmentation change, or is there actual muscular action here really constricting your iris? It doesn't seem possible. As an aside, are you exclusively carnivorous?'

Carlos was half way back to his car before he started actually planning out an experiment to test the visual capabilities of a creature with no iris, even though that test would never see the light of day. It was far too biased with words like 'monster' and ‘subject’ to ever be appropriate to bring up to an actual citizen.

As luck would have it, his speech was newsworthy enough for Cecil. Unfortunately, not at all for the reason Carlos was expecting.

His first thought was that he needed to modify his theory about why Cecil's irises contracted. He had been listening to the show in the field with his team while they worked on the mystery of the house that didn’t exist. It seemed like it existed, like it was just right there when you looked at it, and it was between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not. But it did not exist. Sam, one of the botanists, laughed lightly at the military cemetery comment, but no one offered any teasing words, or any real acknowledgement of it at all. Carlos supposed that they were all in this together, and no one wanted to risk breaking rank as they faced off against the impossibilities and horrors they knew were coming.

Sam turned to Carlos and said “I'll give you five dollars if you knock on the door” and the issue passed by the group unmentioned. The only thought that lingered in Carlos' mind was disbelief at Cecil’s fascination with his hair, it was getting wildly out of hand, he was sure he looked awful. He would need to get a haircut before he had any real news to report.

 

-

 

Suspension of disbelief was familiar. Carlos was a fan of science fiction. His favorite stories were the kind that threw you right in the middle of the story right away and slowly pulled out the explanation by the end. Nothing may make sense now, but it will by the end. That’s what science was. Nothing makes sense, you have to just trust in what you are recording and keep going forward to find out why you are getting the results that you are. So really, he was already applying the practice to real life. Just now, it was a little… more necessary. He couldn’t quite see the threads of logic, but surely they were there. Cecil saw the threads of logic spun around the town. Carlos could rely on his equipment and Cecil’s show to make sense of it. He could suspend his disbelief for the day, and then reframe his reality at night with the help of Cecil’s radio program and his observations and measurements.

It was working, it worked for months. No, It worked for a span of time. No, it worked…

I worked…

Time wasn’t measurable in Night Vale. Or… it was, but it turned out that it didn’t match up with external measurements. Or…

Carlos felt his reality stutter.

He had discovered that time in Night Vale passed more slowly than it did elsewhere. He had discovered that one of his primary, one of the most primary, tools of measurement on which he relied was completely and utterly _false_. Carlos discovered that one of the points of reality on which he relied, which gave him confidence in his ability to unravel the world and see it from the inside out, was utterly devoid of meaning and purpose.

Almost all of his equipment used time in some way, either it was measurements over a period of time, or waiting an amount of time before results were complete, or literally measuring time. All of that was unreliable.

Carlos flicked on the radio. Cecil might say something like existence by its own nature in unreliable, and ramble on and on about and ever widening void. Carlos needed his other point of reality to frame this in. But the radio was playing a repeat broadcast of wind blowing across the mouth of a distant and ancient well.

Carlos still had Cecil’s number, but he hadn’t called, he could call now. He could get one stable point back under his feet.  He could forget that he was talking to a fanged white eyed man with an unhealthy obsession, and just think about how he was talking to a confident member of the Night Vale community, then Carlos could also be a confident observer of the Night Vale community.

It barely even rang once.

Cecil couldn't care less about time. Carlos was panicking and Cecil just sounded happy. It was a calming drug washing through his veins. He called again when he found out why the clocks were all off, even though he got Cecil’s voice mail he was able to catch a reply on the radio. Carlos’ attention slipped over Cecil’s fawning just as easily as Cecils attention slipped over the danger Carlos was trying to express. There didn’t seem to be a world-ending disaster.

He started calling more frequently, when he was scared at first, and then just with reports, and then one time he didn't know why, but he stuttered out something about not calling for personal reasons (obviously? Why had he said that?) and started talking about a localized black hole that had completely destroyed the Smithwick house and how it might appear again, which was stupid and false, but Cecil didn’t seem to know or care.

There was a different timbre to his voice when Cecil was on the phone, it was a little more present and a little less controlled. Once or twice he tried to meet Cecil in person, also not for personal reasons, but instead of relaxed Carlos just felt nervous. He didnt want to lead Cecil on, he didn’t want to send any mixed messages. Oh, but, what was more pressing was of course the teeth and the eyes, the monster parts. Not the fact that Cecil would sometimes bump his ankle against Carlos’. Or sometimes how his eyes relaxed, turning into some semblance of normal. Not normal, that was rude, average. Sometimes Cecil just looked average while Carlos blathered on about seismometers. Then Cecil would catch him off guard with a terrifyingly pointy smile which was definitely, absolutely, one-hundred-percent scarier than the fact that their ankles sometimes touched.

Carlos just kept talking about seismometers and how unreliable they were.

 

One particular evening those same untrustworthy seismometers were reading a 5.5 on the Richter Scale and Carlos couldn't feel a thing. Alex, his linguistics expert, ended up being the one to determine the schedule of them, if you could call it that. It was more of a makeshift bloodstone oracle, but it could warn them before each one. Carlos had been waiting for this one in particular. Since he didn’t have access to ground penetrating radar he had taken this opportunity to get some subsurface data through reflection seismology. Admittedly it was not particularly reliable, and certainly Carlos didn’t have much field experience using it. Still, Carlos was sure there were supposed to be different readings under the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, to account for the underground city. (“When exactly did that become a normal thing to expect?” Carlos muttered to himself.) Aside from the fact that the seismic waves didn't appear to exist at all, the reading seemed accurate.

 

Carlos reflected on the difference between ‘understanding a danger was misunderstood’ and ‘assuming that meant there was no danger at all’ as he collapsed to one knee. He saw a rivulet of blood running down his left arm. Then he saw nothing.

 

Carlos woke up with Teddy Williams’ face over his own. His vision swam in an out while Teddy muttered something over him. People were yelling all around him. He should not have charged in, he should have asked Cecil about it first.

Teddy turned away from Carlos and shouted “Someone call NVCR, He's fine.”

Cecil's show. Cecil was on the air right now. “Is Cecil ok?” Carlos said weakly.

Teddy gave him a sour look in reply, but said nothing. Carlos vaguely remembered calling him an idiot, or a jackass or something terrible. Teddy had taken care of him anyway. That’s what people did here. That’s what Cecil inspired in people.

Carlos felt like he should feel safe. He was supposed to feel safe now, he had bandages. He had a doctor/bowling alley owner to look after him. He was not currently being attacked by anything visible. He wanted to make sure Cecil got the news that he was OK. He wanted someone to turn the radio on. Carlos stared at the old stage lights mounted to the ceiling ready for Cosmic Bowling night and listened to the war begin at lane five. A sense was welling up in his stomach that someone very close to him was being tormented. The thought of sitting up made Carlos' head swim, but he tried anyway.

The thought of many things made Carlos’ head swim; Muttering some half formed confession about his fears and feelings, putting his hand on the knee of someone he trusted, working up the courage to call for personal reasons, stumbling through a first date with someone he was still partially terrified of, being unable to place the source of that terror anymore. Carlos tried anyway.

 

-

 

Carlos’ eyes were firmly affixed to a point not inside the car. The car was affixed to a road that was not in front of Carlos’ apartment. The road was affixed to a patch of earth that was not perceptibly shaking from violent earthquakes. The Earth was affixed to nothing.

_I kissed him last time. Last time there was definitely a kiss. He talked about it on the radio. Everyone knows. So this time I have to. I mean. I want to. I’m supposed to want to and I’m not supposed to be scared of it. I’ll just lean over. I’ll just do that._

_I’m going to do that right now._

“I want to ask you about…” Carlos said.

“Do you want to come inside?” Cecil cut him off in a rush, before pausing. “I mean. No, I mean. I meant, like, you can ask me your question. Inside my apartment.“ Carlos had gotten pretty good at telling what direction Cecil was looking, even when his eyes had gone stark white in embarrassment. They were very carefully looking at the center console.

“I don’t think we’re on the same page.”

“Oh,” Cecil was forcing a smile, but sounded like he wanted to die on the spot.

“Not to imply… I mean. That page is in the _book_. It’s just maybe on the next page from where I am. But I’m… looking… forward to it? The page I mean.” Carlos put one palm on his face, hoping to gather his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“It’s fine, just.” Carlos sighed. “It’s just. I wanted to ask about your teeth.”

Cecil tilted his head a little to the right, clearly confused about the direction the conversation was heading.

“Are, I mean... Obviously they are, but … _are_ they sharp?”

Cecil furrowed his eyebrow, “I guess, not really. I don't file them or anything, that’s so tacky.”

“Right. Of course.” Carlos said. “So like, this is a crazy thing to say, but you know.” Carlos looked out the windshield and ran his hand along his neck. “You're not going to, like, bite me, right?”

In reply Cecil leaned over the center console to get between Carlos and the windshield with which he was utterly fascinated. He kissed Carlos carefully, lingering for a moment, before pulling away. “I am a very gentle person.”

Cecil was looking up at him, his eyes had relaxed and the color had returned. Like this it was so easy to forget everything Carlos had been worrying about. He leaned forward and kissed him again, hesitantly parting his lips and letting Cecil deepen it. He couldn't quite bring himself to kiss Cecil back with the same passion that he was enjoying, though he wanted to.

When Cecil pulled back their lips stuck together for a fraction longer due to the dry desert air. “My apartment is really nice.” Cecil said quietly.

 

Carlos could not confirm nor deny that Cecil’s apartment was nice. He dimly registered that the entry way had a terrible little endstand when he jammed his knee into it, trying to balance taking off his shoes with an excitable radio host crawling all over him. The living room floor was also raised two inches higher than the entryway, exclusively to make him stumble in and feel like a moron when all he wanted to do was seem like the kind of person who was not terrified. He had to trust-fall onto the sofa when Cecil pushed him down and followed within seconds. Cecil slid himself neatly along Carlos’ jawline, from lip to stubble to ear. He brushed the corner of his mouth gently along Carlos’ skin as he went and tucked himself carefully against Carlos’ body when he was there.

Carlos registered his reaction before he registered the cause. He had always thought that terror and arousal were opposite, waves of matching frequency and inverted amplitude, and as such would cancel one another out. This did not appear to be the case. They both shot through him in equal parts, amplifying one another, sending adrenaline coursing back in reverse along their pathway and rushing into his brain. Carlos felt that and _then_ he registered, very keenly due to the adrenaline, three pinpricks of light pressure on his ear, two behind, and one on top. Cecil was biting his ear.

Carlos probably jumped, most likely. He wasn’t fully aware of what was happening, he was having sensory overload from all angles. Evidence would suggest that Carlos jumped, because Cecil pulled away about an inch.

“No?” He asked gently “You said earlier… about my teeth? I thought maybe you had a thing for them.”

What Carlos probably said, based on knowing himself fairly well, was “I think you got a very different thing from that conversation than I did.”

“I thought so,” Cecil purred. Which did not mesh correctly with what Carlos had probably said. In fact, considering events, it didn’t make sense at all. Carlos willed his heartbeat down and thought very carefully about how his mouth had moved when he was talking, and what sounds had registered in his ear.

What Carlos had actually said was “Kind of, yea.”

Then Cecil had said “I thought so.”

Then Cecil had bit his earlobe again, and Carlos was maybe probably sure that he had whimpered, but really, perception is fragile and easily torn.

Cecil bit a trail down his neck and across his collar, laying kisses after each one and tearing down the buttons on Carlos’ shirt. Carlos was having trouble formulating a reaction other than passive worship of what was happening. Cecil was pushing off the plaid work shirt from Carlos’s shoulder when Carlos caught sight of something strange on Cecil’s arm. Or at least, Carlos was pretty sure he had seen something. Curiously he ran a hand up Cecils arm, pushing his rolled sleeves a little higher, but was met with nothing out of the ordinary, just the crook of an elbow. He was perplexed and slowly becoming the type of person who did not ignore confusion in the face of danger, or arousal. “Cecil. do you have any…” He searched for a word that lead in the right direction, coming up mostly empty handed. “..tattoos?”

Cecil nuzzled once at Carlos’ neck before pulling back a little, resting his weight on Carlos’ left leg, leaving his hands on his chest. “Just the one.” He smiled in that friendly, terrifying and (Carlos had newly discovered) arousing way, “Do you want to see it?” before adding a hurried and sheepish. “It’s just on my back.”

Carlos nodded.

“I got it a little while before I started working at the station. Because of the tablets and all, you know.” Carlos didn’t know, but he didn’t ask. Cecil was unbuttoning his shirt, looking at his own hands, and Carlos did not really want to interrupt with questions about what was sure to be a terribly interesting fact about life in Night Vale, it was a less immediate curiosity than the thing he’d seen, and also Cecil’s chest.

Cecil peeked upward when he was at the last button with a wide and sharp smile, right before sliding back and placing his feet on the floor. He turned around primly, sliding the white shirt down his back. There was a small black image of a radio tower on his left shoulder blade, nothing else. Cecil probably didn’t need to slip the shirt off his arms and let it fall to the ground, but he did anyway. Carlos leaned forward, intending to pull Cecil and his adorable tattoo back down and around to him and conveniently ignore anything he thought he saw, except then he saw it again.

It was Carlos the scientist, not Carlos the boyfriend, who pushed his thumb gently against Cecil’s lower back, coaxing the skin out from the edge of his waistband where he had seen the object of his curiosity. Cecil was wearing high waisted slacks, so it wouldn’t have been revealing anything traditionally interesting on a traditional person. On Cecil, though, there was something purple. More vividly purple than a bruise, and with more clearly defined edges.

“ _Carlos_! Oh my gosh.” Cecil laughed airily.

“Do you have... ” Carlos the scientist trailed off, unsure of how to identify what he had seen.

“Oh my gosh.” Cecil repeated, laughing and turning around to bury his face in the crook of Carlos’ shoulder. “Oh my. Wow. You just did that,” He said it in a good way. In a ‘I can’t believe that just happened and I am very happy about it having happened’ way.

Carlos the scientist wished he had his tape recorder so he could log his initial observations. With Cecil tucked into his neck again he could see clearly down the smooth tan plane of Cecil’s back. His midback dipped down, and then back up in an elegant curve. Carlos the boyfriend wanted to record that too. One of the Carlos’ ran his hand down the line of Cecil’s back, tracing an unknowable and long wanting path. He trailed his fingers just an inch below Cecil’s waistband curiously. Cecil was laughing, or maybe sighing, something with his mouth. The flats of his teeth were pressed in a smile to Carlos’ shoulder. If he tilted a little, he would have been biting. He wasn’t yet.

Skin discoloration implied that it was a flaw or in some way ugly. Marking implied that Cecil was an animal. Pigmentation made Carlos think of sea creatures and lizards. There was a purple, moving… Line? Shadow?

Brush stroke.

There was a long unfurling two inch wide purple brush stroke pained by an unseeable paintbrush, slightly frayed, trailing up the small of Cecil’s back. Carlos ran his thumb down it, testing gently for, well, any kind of data point with which to begin. It was not raised, It was not textured, it left no residue, It made Cecil stifle a deep and urgent noise in the back of his throat. Carlos ran his thumb down it twice more. To validate the experiment. Science, you know.

“Do you like that?” Carlos whispered.

Cecil breathed his assent to Carlos’ collarbone, pressing the knife of his mouth down and his spine up against Carlos’ hand.

Carlos ran two fingers down tan skin, a control group. He got a reaction, sure, but not one so desperate as when he pulled his fingers perpendicularly across the curious line.

More had started unfurling, shyly pushing out along Cecil’s back, over his shoulder and down his arm. There were six in full, four long enough to reach the tips of Cecils fingers with slack to spare and two shorter, only stretching at most up to his shoulder. When they got close to one another bursts of static played between them, sometimes forming into solid pictures, simple imagery, sometimes staying as simple paint splatter.

Cecil pressed his hips downward with the same tentative caution that he touched Carlos’ chest. Dress pants and denim dulling the hard friction between them. Carlos felt a wave of relief that he wasn’t expecting to, realizing after the fact that somewhere in his mind, yes, he’d been worried that Cecil wasn’t as desperately hard as he was. A smaller part of his mind had been worried that with all the differences of Night Vale, perhaps there were even more undiscovered and unexpected aspects of Cecil. Carlos drove his hips upward, breathing hard, encouraged that at least everything felt like it was as expected.

Cecil pulled away slightly, angling himself and using Carlos' chest as leverage to grind himself down, sharp bursts of need shot through Carlos, he wanted all of it, the teeth on him, the blank eyes starting, the tendrils unfurling.

Cecil’s hands were so incredibly warm against his chest scar. Soothing the tightness there. The warmth was spreading out farther than Cecils fingers could reach, much farther actually. Carlos looked down and was bewildered to see that the brush stroke had extended out from Cecils hands, flicking across Carlos warmly. They were purple on Cecil, but on Carlos’ darker skin they had become nearly black.

Carlos would have expected the trail of it to maintain skin contact, curling along Cecil’s hand, following the curve to the point of contact between them before continuing out. Instead the trail stopped at the zenith of the curve and followed a straight line of negative space onto Carlos. Like something solid laid over them, only revealing itself along the points of contact. The trail fractured, but was still connected.

Awestruck by the sight Carlos took Cecil by the wrist and lifted his hand away, wondering if the tendril would stay, permanently affixed, or be severed when skin contact broke.

Cecil pulled away abruptly, wrenching his wrist away from Carlos, the tendrils retreated up his arms and onto his back.

“I am so sorry” Cecil gasped, pulling back. If it wasn't for Carlos’ knee raised and blocking the way, Cecil would likely be on the other end of the sofa by now. “I didn’t, I - I” Cecil stammered “You just, I thought.” He was wringing his hands, eyes almost glowing with blank white light. “You touched them so - so I. I thought that it was ok to touch you back. I didn’t. That was an assumption. There are a lot - I shouldn’t have assumed - There are a lot of things that people touch that they don’t want touching them back. Shower Curtains, Glass, The haze of sleep. I - I”

Carlos reached out with both hands, placing them on Cecil’s waist and letting the weight of them pull Cecil back down and close.

“It’s ok, I wasn’t saying stop. I’m sorry. I was just curious.”

Cecil folded against him again, arms tucked in, no longer exploratory. Carlos could see that the purple had retreated back beyond his waist line.

“So they emanate from a central location?” Carlos asked, wrapping his arms around Cecil’s lower back.

“I, well. The tendril hub is on my tailbone.” Cecil said meekly, more to Carlos’ sternum than anything

“Is it a sex organ?”

Cecil scoffed a laugh. “No,” he said, drawling out the reply incredulously. “Carlos, ew. They’re just sensitive.”

“They’re nice. It looks like you are being painted.” Cecil pressed his forehead down a little harder at that. Carlos was pretty sure his irises had constricted harshly in a blush. “They’re warm though. I like them.” He assured, reaching two fingers back down to coax them back out.

“Is their area malleable?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Do they always take up the same space? Are they the same size, or do they change?”

“The um, I’m not a scientist. They are the same um… volume? Always. but they don’t always show up as the same size. they have that shape all the time.”

“Volume is a measure of three dimensional space though.” Carlos said, “How can they have the same volume but differing areas on a two dimensional surface?”

“Is this how scientists talk dirty?” Cecil asked, pulling Carlos up into a seated position and then back down over him. “I mean. I have no idea what you said, but it's totally working for me.”

With Cecil under him, looking up with his irises visible, comfortable, a swell of confidence rushed through his chest like molten lead. It pulled him down, one hand pressed against Cecil’s back and the other already pulling at the corner of his slacks. He knew Cecil had finesse, it was written in everything he did. Carlos did not, but for once he felt like that wasn’t going to be a complaint.

Carlos pressed his lips against the crook of Cecil’s hip, moving inward slowly, only managing to get his pants down part way before he stopped caring about it. At a certain point it didn't really matter if they were around his legs or on the other side of the room. Cecil was below him, but having trouble staying put where Carlos had pressed him into the cushions. He propped himself up on his elbows, and his hips were barely staying down as he reacted to Carlos’ touch. Carlos was having a difficult time kissing with how hard he was grinning at the reaction. When Carlos pressed his lips to the juncture of Cecils hip and cock Cecil gasped out “Carlos” drawing out the name in a low plead, “can I grab your hair please?”

Carlos said “mmhmm” into Cecil’s skin and immediately felt a sharp tug as Cecil fell from his elbows to the sofa and grabbed two handfuls of hair.

“Carlos, please.” Cecil’s voice had gone breathless.

Carlos took Cecil full into his mouth, urged forward by the slurry of begging and approving words above him and the faint tugging at his scalp. He played lazily with his tongue against Cecil and stroked the pads of his fingers along with purple tendrils curling around Cecil’s hip. They ran over and through his fingers as easily as ribbon and paired with a perceptible twitch in Cecil’s cock when he ran a particularly complex pattern over them.

“Carlos” Cecil never seemed to get enough of saying his name, and each throaty moan of it ran through his body straight to his cock. But Carlos’ fingers were busy with Cecil and he had to settle for pained waiting for now. “You feel so good.” Cecil groaned, “I’ve never wanted anything as badly as this. I’ve never felt as good as this.”

Even if Cecil _did_ talk for a living he should not be this coherent. Carlos took it as a challenge.

“Oh, fuck, Carlos. That’s th-- ere. You have no idea h-- how-- ah. How long- shit. Carlos I’ve been- wa- wan-” Carlos took Cecil as far down his throat as he was capable of, running his tongue down in rhythm and was rewarded with the rare feat of halting Cecil mid-monologue. Cecil came like a man melting, falling back into the sofa with a groan, his fingers loosely tangled in Carlos’ hair and brush-stroke tendrils flicking black designs over Carlos’ skin.

Carlos expected Cecil to somewhat disengage from physical contact, but as he kneeled upwards he just had Cecil hanging off his shoulders, all dead weight and smiles. Carlos just fell back onto the other side of the sofa, dragging Cecil along with him and groaning as Cecil settled against him, thigh pressed against Carlos’ jeans. “My Carlos is so perfect.” Cecil muttered happily, kissing him at the juncture of neck and jaw.

Cecil traced a line down to Carlos’ stomach, fingers trailing slightly behind his lips, and tendrils trailing slightly behind his fingers. Carlos was still straining painfully against his jeans. He rushed ahead of Cecil’s path to undo the fly, frantically excited. He was only able to push the denim partly away from himself before Cecil had taken his hands and pushed them away. Carlos whined for a moment, tangling one hand in Cecils hair as payback and clasping the other around Cecil’s hand, stroking his thumb along skin and tendril.

With their hands still entwined Cecil pulled away Carlos’ jeans and boxers, with Carlos eagerly pushing and shimmying out. Cecil was kneeling low over him, trying to hid a smile by biting his lower lip. He ran his hands back up to Carlos’ hip. His lip was pressed down in sharp valleys by Cecil’s teeth.

Shit.

Shit, the teeth.

“Wait,Cecil, hang on.” Carlos said quickly and frantically. Cecil was already at Carlos’ hip, fingers wrapped delicately at the base of his cock. He looked up at Carlos paused, mocking innocence even as his tongue flicked out to lick the bead of pre-cum that had pooled at his head.

“tha-- ha.” Carlos lost what he was trying to say in the gasp.

“Don’t worry, Carlos.” Cecil purred, voice hitting that low radio octive.

It wasn’t so much a particular thought, or a memory of how he had trusted Cecil above all else for more than a year, in the face of indescribable terror. It was just a feeling of assurance that pushed Carlos’ head in a tentative nod.

Cecil licked him again, eyed closed in focus. His tongue dipped under the ridge of his head, and down along the underside as Cecil wrapped more of his mouth around Carlos, gently, softly and confidently. He was going slow, but Carlos was already so hard and ready he didn’t want to wait through the teasing. It took almost all of his focus to keep his hips from thrusting up of their own accord. He groaned at the effort, panicking that if he lost control he might risk nicking himself. Cecil was masterfully taunting him, just a hair too slow to bring Carlos over the edge.

Carlos was not able to keep from bucking forward once when Cecil had pulled away. He was desperate for the contact again. Cecil only placed both hands firmly on his hip and pushed him down. “You have to be careful Carlos,” he warned before brushing the points of his mouth gently along Carlos’ thigh. It didn’t hurt, it was just an awareness of danger, but Carlos gasped and whimpered at the contact anyway.

Cecil kept him still, held hard against the sofa. He quickened the pace and the pressure. Carlos was trying to sound appreciative, sexy, anything. He was trying to say things like ‘Yes’ or ‘please’ or ‘just like that’ or ‘Cecil.’ He really wanted to say ‘Cecil’  in particular. He always loved it so much when Cecil said ‘Carlos.’ All he could manage were noises in an approximation of speech. The loss of vocal control was, embarrassingly, expected, but on top of that he was painfully aware of a complete loss of motor control. His hands were in Cecil’s hair, trying to urge him to finish, pleading in their grasp. His chest was heaving in gasps. His hips were only still by virtue of Cecil’s strength and leverage. The pressure in his body had built well past his usual breaking point. Against all odds Carlos managed to open his eyes and look down.

It took a few stuttering seconds to get past Cecil’s mouth on him, descending and pulling away, and the way Cecil’s eyes flicked over him, catching his own once while a smile curled at his lips, and how Cecil’s hands were digging into his hip, and how his own hand was tangled up in his hair. Carlos had to take that all in first. Then, once it was all firmly imprinted in memory, he took note of the purple band, tight around the base of his cock.

The tendrils could exert pressure.

Carlos finally managed to made a sound in approximation of ‘Cecil,’ thick and pleading. The pressure on him blissfully retracted and he strained upward, coming hard into Cecils mouth in shuddering fits as his reality stuttered once again.

Cecil was kneeling off the edge of the sofa looking far too pleased with himself. Carlos waved a tired hand at him, beckoning him over. As soon as Cecil was within arms reach Carlos pulled him down, tucking Cecil between himself and the back of the sofa and curling around him, pressing his face into Cecils hair.

There was nothing scary about Cecil Palmer.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ Check my tumblr if you want to chat with me about my weird porn or other shit.](http://dustatdusk.tumblr.com/)


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